Review: Parallel 17 and L'Asie

Parallel 17 was voted top 10 best new restaurants by 5280 in 2008, however the meal was at points almost inedible.  The vietnamese french fusion cuisine flopped for me in many areas.  On mondays, they offer happy hour all night which brought in a full house around 7 on a traditionally slow dining night.  The tuna and tofu tacos, both tried to imitate TAG's version of sushi tacos however, P17's version were excessively salty and inedible. The fried taco shell sitting on a guacamole mousse reminded me of what you would find prepackaged from the grocery store.  The duck spring roll was bland and the grilled beef on the bahn mi slider was more like deli style roast beef.  The only dish interesting was the pork belly sliders on the traditional asian white buns, with a blueberry coulis and heavy flavors of hoisin.  We shared the sizzling saigon crepe (pictured above) which was a coconut scented crepe filled with sauteed mushrooms, beansprouts and shrimp.  It was pretty bland, but piqued our interest in terms of the concept.  I've decided that when any portion of the meal is deamed inedible, in this case the tacos, the restaurant cannot score anything higher than a 5.

P17 Plate score: 4


I went to L'Asie because one of my friends absolutely loves this place and insisted I try it before I left denver.  L'Asie offers thai, vietnamese, japanese and chinese dishes and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, deals such as half price appetizers and two for one drinks will please both drinkers and eaters.    The combination platter of appetizers including the chicken satay, thai spring rolls (which are really vietnamese) and gyoza (japanese) were all solid and I was pleasantly surprised with the calamari.  After tender slices of squid are deep fried, they are sauteed in a garlic, onion, spring onion sauce that made the flavors pop and made this appetizer a success and different from the usual calamari dishes you find elsewhere.  While the color of my combination (chicken, shrimp and tofu) pad thai was a little too neon  and desperately needed some hot sauce to add dimension to the dish, the flavor was on point and the portion was more than generous.


L'Asie Plate Score: 7.5